The present invention relates to a pedal device for a vehicle and an automobile using the same, particularly to a pedal device of a vehicle suitable for the use in the vehicle having an automatic cruise control where the driver does not need the accelerator operation and an automobile using the same.
Recently, a self-control system is being developed, in which the speed of automobile can be controlled to become a preset speed of automobile, for example, like following distance control automatic cruise (ACC: Adaptive Cruise Control), and an engine, a motor, a transmission, and a brake is self-controlled so as to keep the safe following distance by detecting the distance between this car and the preceding car with radar. In this case, only the start and acceleration are controlled automatically and the stop and deceleration are controlled based on driver's will to improve safety more. As the method for that, the deceleration and the stop are controlled by operating only brake pedal of a present braking system, and the start and acceleration is controlled automatically.
Here, as described in the Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 4-38600, the start and stop of a vehicle is carried out by one pedal running, in which only brake operation is performed when set in a slow acceleration running mode under the traffic jam.
However, according to the apparatus disclosed in the Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 4-38600, only the usage of so-called on/off type can be effective, in which the deceleration and stop are carried out by the operation of the brake pedal, and the start and acceleration are carried out by releasing the brake pedal. Therefore, it is required for the driver to wait to do a rapid deceleration to avoid the risk with keeping the foot from the brake pedal. Therefore, the driver's workload is very large.
Then, the applicant proposed a new apparatus in the Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-56050, in which a brake pedal device has the footrest function to put the foot on in usual and to work the brake by stepping on the brake pedal harder than usually.
However, because brake pedal used in the method previously proposed is one being used in general, brake operation is performed around the heel put on the floor face. Therefore, a first problem is that it is impossible to depress strongly the brake pedal when the rapid braking is required.
Further, there is a second problem in this apparatus. Namely, in a brake pedal with the footrest function that the force-on-pedal less than the fixed value does not generate the braking force even if the foot is put on the pedal, the usability is deteriorated dependently on the driver because necessary footrest force is different according to an individual driver when the force-on-pedal set point is fixed.